Stories of family and ancestors who lived and worked in Cohoes (textile and garment workers, butchers and barbers), Waterford (canalers), Whitehall (farmers and canalers), Port Henry (iron miners and Civil War soldiers), Champlain (canalers and farmers) and other towns along the Champlain Canal in New York State with some diversions to the places they emigrated from....Quebec (landless farmers, shoemakers, sailors, soldiers), Acadia (more farmers), and even Cornwall, England (tin miners).

Thursday, December 25, 2014

Al Rivet, Sonny Yetto (Guertin) and Jim Laurent, all originally from upstate New York where the winter blows hard and cold, share a Christmas Day in California without shoveling snow and where the temperature is above is above 80 degrees Fahrenheit. They just cannot believe Harriet can walk barefooted on December 25th!!!

Monday, September 15, 2014

Claudette, if you are still reading and checking this blog, please send an email to me at FrancoAmericanGravy@gmail.com. I have been trying, unsuccessfully, to contact you since you commented on the post about our mutual grandaunt Marie Anne Lacasse in 2012 !!! Merci!!

Sunday, September 14, 2014

If I want to spend a day researching French Canadian & Acadian ancestors with materials that are not available online, I have a few choices and have to make some decisions. I can drive to Manchester New Hampshire where the American Canadian Genealogical Society resides in a former school. It is a 3 hour 39 minute drive according to Google maps and about 225 miles. It is always well worth the trip and I visit my in laws at the same time but it is a long haul for a weekend. I have made two breakthroughs in my brick walls at ACGS helping me to learn some brick walls are only made of plaster.

Alternatively, I would drive to Dannemora in Clinton County where Northern New York American-Canadian Genealogical Society moved their library last year. That's 4 hours 50 minute and 315 miles. It is open from 9 to 3 on Saturday. I have not been to NNYACGS in a long time and would love to see the new library in the new location.

The third choice is the path of least resistance using less gas guzzling mileage, less transportation time and less money using MetroNorth trains and a few block to the New York Public Library at Bryant Park. That was the choice I took yesterday when I wanted to use Dictionnaire Genealogique Familles Acadienne, the definitive work documenting Acadian ancestors by Stephen White. I emailed the library three days ahead to be certain the books would be available and got a conformation. Saturday morning , I took the train to Grand Central and walked two blocks to Fifth Avenue and Library Way.

And there were the volumes waiting for me when I got to the reserve desk...

How lucky to have three good choices to read and obtain documentation! By the way, below is a photo of myself with Denise Lamarche-Blanchard, Lucie Leblanc Consentino from Acadian Ancestral Home, Stephen White, genealogist in residence at the University of Moncton in New Brunswick and author of the books above, and Marcelle Comeau during the Leblanc Family Reunion at the Acadian World Congress.

If you visit Perce Rock, remember to get up early, very early if you want to bond with the stone. The best way to visit the rock is to wake up before the sun and start walking before other folks. Here's my photos when only a few people were up and about at Perce Rock.

late morning along the hiking trail behind the Catholic Church

back to the base of the trail

and then in the afternoon with the children fishing on the docks, the voices of families walking the board walk, the kayakers, the tour boats, bright sunshine...

Tuesday, September 2, 2014

One again, I am returning to the story of The Pembroke because in an earlier post (October 2010), I wrote about the ancestors of Edith Mylott nee Glode who in 1755 were cast into exile aboard The Pembroke, but I didn't didn't expand the story to the ancestors of Rivets who were also aboard that vessel. I asked my reader to also read the story about the Pembroke on the Acadian Ancestral Home Site to develop an understanding of the particular circumstances our ancestors endured during the expulsion.

The story of The Pembroke is a subplot in the tragedy of the Acadian people who were ousted, expelled, excised from the area around the Bay of Fundy from September through December 1755 by New England colonials under the authority of Governor Charles Lawrence and William Shirley, colonial governor of Massachusetts. Over 7000 Acadian people were dispersed into small ships and sent to colonies along the North Atlantic seaboard and Haiti. Some ships sank at sea, some were refused permission to dock and passengers remained without food and sanitary conditions in the ships while disease took over. One ship, The Pembroke, was the exception. Its Acadian passengers overtook the crew and commandeered the ship across the Bay of Fundy to St John in present day New Brunswick. On board that ship, were not only the Guilbault ancestors of Edith Glode and her sons, there also were the Robichaud, Melanson and Belliveau ancestors of Claire, Albert and Raymond Rivet of Cohoes, New York. According to the article written by Paul Delaney on Acadian Ancestral Home, the probable leader of the Acadians on The Pembroke was Charles Belliveau. He is also the great great great great great grandfather of Claire, Al and Ray Rivet!!!

After bringing The Pembroke into the mouth of the St John's River, the Acadians were discovered by the English provoking an engagement, firing of arms, taking of English prisoners and ultimately burning The Pembroke so it could not be used against them. Subsequently, the Acadians made their way to present day Fredericton, New Brunswick, then a French settlement called Saint Anne des Pays Bas where they wintered enduring malnutrition and exposure to the harsh environment. The Rivet ancestor, Prudent Robichaud, quite elderly, died sometime during this struggle and somewhere along the Saint John River. It is believed the Acadians including Charles Belliveau, Charles Melanson, and their families made their way north via canoe on the St John's River through Grand Falls (Grand Sault) to present day Edmunston regions and then onto the Madawaska River to Lac Temiscouata (present day Quebec). The route continued from Lac Temiscouata overland and via waterways to Trois Pistoles on the south shore of the Saint Lawrence River concluding in Ville Quebec.

Unfortunately, Charles Belliveau and Charles Melanson, like many of the Guilbault family, are believed to have succumbed to smallpox in 1758 and 1757, respectively, after completing their harrowing escape.

Below, the St John River near Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada

Below is a recap of the stories written about Acadians in this blog so far. This list includes some early posts that may not have been well researched but I am reviewing them for accuracy and hope they will "make the cut"!

Monday, August 25, 2014

I have been writing about my travels this month in the land of Acadia. A few months ago I purchased a children's book titled Evangeline for Children by Alice Couvillon and Elizabeth Moore with the intention of sharing Longfellow's epic with the children in the family who have at least one Acadian ancestor.

So my first victim is entering 2nd grade in primary school next week. I am going to try this book out on her.

Second grader at the County Fair with Painted Face

This second grader has Acadian ancestors in her Beauvais and Bissonnette line. I am posting her line so other Bissonnette/Bisnett and Beauvais/Bova from Cohoes and Waterford who descended from Celena Beauvais and/or her father Solyme Beauvais may also know how they have an Acadian great grand ancestor.

who was just four years
old when the events in this story of Evangeline occurred.

He probably experienced the Acadian Deportation as a small child.

He was the son of

Geoffroy Benoit
1716-1769

He and his wife were
exiled to Lancaster in the Massachusetts Colony

where they lived until
they were able to move to Quebec.

He was the son of

Claude Benoit
1686-1743,

he was the son of

Martin Benoit
1643-1714.

Martin was born in
France and came to Acadia to
start a life with his wife, Marie in the spring of 1671 aboard l'Oranger.

Children's Area at the LeBlanc ReunionCMA 2014

Below is a recap of the stories written about Acadians in this blog so far. This list includes some early posts that may not have been well researched but I am reviewing them for accuracy and hope they will "make the cut"!

Sunday, August 24, 2014

I have a full time job working in the Bronx, New York City usually interacting with people of many different cultures, religions and languages. My ancestors who migrated from Quebec to New York for jobs and work really do not seem much different than the fathers and mothers I meet everyday at my work. They are struggling, often working several jobs and want their children to get a good education.

Below are photos I took at the Tintamarre Acadian Parade held in Madawaska, Maine on 15 August 2014 contrasted with photos of the Puerto Rican Day Parade in New York City taken by different media. The more I look at the photos, the more they look the same. We are a nations of immigrants and it is our strength.

Below is a recap of the stories written about Acadians in this blog so far. This list includes some early posts that may not have been well researched but I am reviewing them for accuracy and hope they will "make the cut"!

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“But soon we shall die and all memory of those five will have left the earth, and we ourselves shall be loved for a while and forgotten. But the love will have been enough; all those impulses of love return to the love that made them. Even memory is not necessary for love. There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning.”

Wilder, Thornton. The Bridge of San Luis Rey. 1927.

Reading this Blog....

...may not seem particularly easy. I post information and stories in whatever sequence comes to me and sometimes it doesn't make a whole lot of sense. I may post about someone and three weeks later write about them again. In between the two posts, there may be stories about other people or places. That is why there is a search button at the bottom of this page.

Thanks for reading and commenting! Email me at FrancoAmericanGravy@gmail.com